>In South Africa ..... extent that many commercial beekeepers quickly turned
>to varroacide treatments to protect their colonies.
I talked with Mike Allsopp in Apimondia at Melbourne. He said that he
recommends not to treat for varroa in Africa. When varroa comes there will
be (and has been) losses, but the bees will recover. He did not state any
numbers, but I understood that also commercial beekeepers are using now less
chemical treatments.
We have to remember that beekeeping in Africa is different. Replacements are
more often done by caching wild swarms than making splits from existing
colonies. And they know how to catch the swarms. One beekeeper told me that
he had cought more than 100 wild swarms in season from one single location
with bait hives. We were told that big part of these would be swarms that
are moving from one area to another because there is not enough food where
they used to live.
Ari Seppälä
Finland
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